I get the impression that public waves were a quick hack that Google created to give new users someone to interact with while the network is new & small. (If y

I get the impression that public waves were a quick hack that Google created to give new users someone to interact with while the network is new & small. (If you just got onboard, it's likely that you only have one friend, and that could get boring very quickly. Furthermore, enabling mass public interaction would give theme some stress situations to test how their infrastructure scales, and how their GWT client scales in the browser.) The strange fake contact that one has to add as a wave participant is one indicator. Another is the fact that with:public is undocumented. Once the service is completely open, it's unlikely that this hack will be needed any longer. I wouldn't be surprised to see the public@a.gwave.com user retired after a while, anyway.